Modern wireless telecommunications, such as cellular telephone technology, 3G, 4G, and the like, have required substantial investment in various types of capital equipment and infrastructure. This includes cellular antenna towers, broadband cables and optical fiber, computer networks and switching equipment. In addition to technical complexity, deployment of network infrastructure also presents legal challenges and complexity since siting these towers, cables, fiber and the like requires much effort to obtain the necessary permits and real estate rights.
As a result of these high expenses, there exist appreciable financial and regulatory incentives to reduce the amount of investment required. One way of reducing such costs is to require certain kinds of resource sharing among companies (telecommunications carriers). For example, certain laws and rules in the U.S. impose upon telecommunications competitors various duties of interconnection and access to real estate rights.
Thus, different telecommunications competitors often share at least non-electronic infrastructure, such as antenna masts, at various cell sites. This is known as passive infrastructure sharing or colocation. Other antenna elements, such as physical antennas, couplers, feeder cables and the like may also be commonly shared in a passive manner.
To reduce costs further, certain organizations have taken over much of the burden of tower management, and these companies in turn lease tower space to various carriers.
Although passive infrastructure sharing and colocation reduces the burden of tower management, the process is still more complex than is desirable. For example, as of June 2015, the entity American Tower advertised a “simplified process” entitled “8 steps to get on the air fast” that illustrates various burdens on wireless carriers seeking to deploy network infrastructure. For example, such a process may include steps such as obtaining permits for equipment, uploading equipment drawings, construction permits, and the like to a third party entity, and providing purchase orders for fees, construction schedules and the like. Once the proper permissions and fees have been obtained, the entity will then typically allow the wireless carrier to install the equipment on the tower managed by the third party entity. This process generally has to be repeated for each tower, and a carrier may need thousands of towers to provide effective coverage. Of course, the alternative approach of attempting to negotiate thousands of different real estate permits with different third parties and constructing thousands of towers would be even more burdensome to wireless carriers or other network operators.